


When You’re Going Through Hell (Keep Going)

by Badwolf36



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-06 14:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badwolf36/pseuds/Badwolf36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles keeps them moving to keep himself from falling apart. He can’t say whether it’s working, but it’s all he has for right now. Set directly in the aftermath of "Currents."</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You’re Going Through Hell (Keep Going)

**Title:** When You’re Going Through Hell (Keep Going)

 **F** **andom:** Teen Wolf

 **Author:** badwolf36

 **Rating:** PG-13

 **Characters:** Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale, Lydia Martin, Isaac Lahey, Cora Hale, Jennifer Blake, Vernon Boyd

 **Word count:** 3,059

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Teen Wolf or any related properties.

 **W** **arnings:** Angst, hurt/comfort

 **Spoilers:** _Episode tag to Currents._

 **Summary:** Stiles keeps them moving to keep himself from falling apart. He can’t say whether it’s working, but it’s all he has for right now.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

 

It’s not silent in Derek’s loft.

Between the ragged breathing of the room’s many occupants, the lapping of the water flooding the loft’s floor and the sobbing of some of the occupants, it’s impossible for the room to be silent.

It is quiet though, words few and far between and those more gasps and moans than distinguishable syllables.

And Stiles is loath to break that quiet.

He didn’t see Boyd die. He didn’t see Boyd die, but Derek’s hands are covered in blood and he can see a set of claw marks on the body in Cora’s embrace. From Derek’s defeated posture and that evidence, what happened is obvious.

He squeezes the hand he has on Derek’s shoulder a little tighter, the chill from the drenched fabric seeping into his fingers. The man’s breath stutters and he curls a little farther into himself.

Mouth dry, Stiles licks his lips before breaking the horrible moment they’re all locked in. “We need to move his body.”

The quiet continues after that, although Cora hugs Boyd closer to her. Derek jerks hard under him, but doesn’t say a word. It takes him a moment, but Stiles finally pulls his gaze from Derek’s shuddering body and looks to the doorway, where Lydia is standing frozen next to where Isaac is crouched with Ms. Blake in his arms.

“Find some bleach, Lydia,” he says. The words are out of his mouth before he’s thought about them. As soon as they’re out though, he recognizes how wrong (it’s too soon, far too soon, too harsh) and right (Derek’s DNA is all over Boyd, his claws the murder weapon, no matter how unwilling, and even with that evidence modified by him being a werewolf at the time, it’s still evidence) they are.

“No,” Cora snarls, eyes bright yellow, but she’s not really looking at him.

Ms. Blake makes some sort of noise. Stiles is pretty sure it’s a mangled attempt at Derek’s name.

“Isaac, is she hurt?” he snaps, the tone sharp and efficient. He can do professional, disassociate into that persona he modeled after his dad at a crime scene so he can do what needs to be done. He has a feeling that if he really starts thinking about what’s happening right in front of him, he will start running and never stop or suffer a panic attack so bad he’ll end up like Scott after that really bad asthma attack he had when he was 13 that landed him in the hospital.

“I…I don’t think…are you hurt?” Isaac asks softly.

“F-Fine,” Stile hears her say. And then, “Derek?”

Derek hasn’t stopped trembling since Stiles grabbed on to him.

Stiles briefly flicks his eyes over to where Cora is sobbing into Boyd’s chest. And promptly has to dig his fingers deeper into Derek’s shoulder just to stay upright as he sees the water lapping at Boyd’s face and sees it again as it had been submerged under the water in one of the Glen Capri’s bathtub. He’d saved Boyd, him and Lydia, they had saved him and now he was dead, dead, deaddeaddead. And the Alphas could come back at any second now, they could kill them all or they could be after Scott and they could be hurting him, murdering him right now, and Deaton could be dead and his dad could be caught in the crossfire and the Alpha pack could slaughter them all, they’re just standing here and they…

He drags his gaze away, heaving a breath into his lungs that stings all the way down. No one has moved.

“Isaac, get the bleach,” he decides. Lydia moves forward at that, the tip of her high heel dipping into the water after she descends a few steps. “Lydia, call Scott. Make sure Deaton’s okay. Then figure out where we can take Boyd’s body. We need somewhere the police can find him. He…his family deserves to know.”

“I…” Derek’s voice cracks as he speaks for the first time. “I…”

“Sssh,” Stile says, tracing his thumb back and forth along the edge of Derek’s shoulder blade.

Stiles loses a short span of time, because when he comes back to himself, Ms. Blake is at his shoulder, visibly shaking but with a firm set to her shoulders.

“Derek?” she asks, coming around to the man’s front and crouching down in front of him. She puts her hand on Derek’s jaw and Stiles can feel it through his whole arm when Derek’s body quakes.

He starts to let go of him then, but Derek’s hand shoots up and grabs his wrist to hold him there at the same time his other arm encircles Ms. Blake’s waist and pulls her in close so that Derek can bury his face into the dark fabric of her dress.

Ms. Blake moves the hand that had been on Derek’s jaw to stroke through his soaked black hair while she lets her other hand drop onto the shoulder Stiles isn’t holding on to.

She starts speaking in low, soft tones, and while Stiles can’t really understand the words, the cadence of them is nice and it seems to soothe Derek a little bit as well.

“Scott and Deaton are okay,” Lydia calls softly from the stairs. “They’re going to the hospital with your dad.”

“Okay,” Stiles says as Isaac sloshes toward him with a white plastic jug in his hand. Stiles swallows hard, wondering how his dad found Deaton and if he’ll have the courage to really go through with this. “Okay.”

Isaac stops when he reaches Cora and Boyd. Stiles watches as Isaac drops to his knees, the water splattering him. The jug of bleach, which he’d let go of, lands with a solid thunk as it hits the floor. Cora hisses as the water splashes her and Boyd, but she doesn’t make any move beyond pulling Boyd’s body a little closer.

Reaching out a tentative hand, Isaac puts his hand on Boyd’s head and lets out a sob as he seems to take in the reality of the situation.

Stiles looks away and ends up catching Ms. Blake’s eyes. She looks scared, but determined, and Stiles has seen that look in his own mirror often enough to recognize that she’s going to try to help, no matter how hard that might end up being. He breaks the gaze first as Derek lets out a sob of his own into Ms. Blake’s dress.

“Ssssh,” he says again. There’s lies he could use here, words like ‘It will okay,’ or ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ But people had said those same words to him when his mom had died and he’d known they weren’t true, no matter how kind the intent behind them was. He has a feeling Derek wouldn’t want the empty words anymore than he did. Instead, he just says, “Sssh, Derek.”

There’s a feminine squeak and a new set of ripples wave the water from the direction of the stairs. “I think I know where we can take him,” Lydia says as she comes up beside them, gingerly stepping through the water. She leans into Stiles a little, pressing her shoulder to his as she lifts her heels out of the water one after the other in a useless effort to let the water drain from them.

“Thanks,” Stiles says after a moment, and he wonders if his reactions seem as delayed to the others as they seem to him.

“Cora, Isaac,” he says softly. And then, when they don’t react, raises his voice, “Guys.”

Two pairs of yellow eyes meet his then, both glossy with tears and both bearing anger and pain at having their mourning interrupted.

“We have to. We…we have to.” Boyd is dead and this time a road flare and some perseverance aren’t going to change that. They have to scrub the evidence from his wounds, they have to move his body, they have to drain the water out of the loft and make sure that they’re all safe (they’re not safe, they’ll never be safe, he can’t protect them, Derek can’t protect them, Scott can’t protect them, he can’t do anything to save the people he loves, they’re not safe) for the night. “Issac, Cora, I need you to carry him after we…after we get him cleaned up.”

He tries to control his breathing, knowing it’s pointless in a room full of werewolves, but he has to try to be the stable one here.

“Ms. Blake?” Stiles asks, addressing her directly for the first time. She’s the adult here, Derek as well, but neither of them (none of them) are in a condition to take charge. “Take Derek upstairs. Uh, please. We’ll take care of this.”

She looks like she wants to protest, actually starts to say, “You shouldn’t have…” when Derek lets out an animal-sounding whine in a frequency that sends Stiles’ stomach into knots.

“Derek, ssssh, this is all we can do now,” he says, shuffling until he can press his legs to Derek’s back, ignoring it when the water starts soaking into the front of his pants. He has a feeling he’ll be ignoring a lot of things from tonight, just like he’s been ignoring things from the bus ride to the cross-country meet and the Glen Capri motel and the Argent’s basement and the mechanic shop and a parking garage where pure white fangs had hovered above his wrist with the promise of power.

“We’ll take care of the rest later. But we have to do this. If my dad finds us here with him…we can’t. We have to.” He’s pleading, voice full of desperation that he’s sure a better person could hide. But he’s not a better person. He’s just a teenager with sarcasm and horrific nightmares and Google-fu skills and panic attacks and surprisingly useful archaic knowledge and too many dead friends who didn’t classify him as the same.

Lydia bumps Stiles’ shoulder and leaves his side, moving until she can pick up the bleach jug. “To denature the DNA, right?” she says, looking back at Stiles for confirmation that he knows she doesn’t need.

“Yeah,” he says, thinking of the way his dad had pored over the ‘animal attack’ case files and the DNA profiles in them, always muttering about how strange it all was. Then he thinks of his dad looking over Boyd and Erica’s missing person files all summer, their pictures spread out across his dining table. “We can’t leave it to chance.”

“Okay,” she says. She unscrews the cap and sloshes closer until she can nudge Cora with the tip of her pump. “Move.”

Cora flashes her fangs at Lydia and lets out a low, guttural growl.

And at that noise, Stiles feels under his hand and where his legs touch him the way Derek shifts his weight, feels the way he draws into himself as his muscles tighten down to try to bear up an unbearable burden once more. In that moment, even more so then when Stiles had tread water for two hours to keep the man alive, Stiles has never felt closer to Derek.

Derek gently pushes Ms. Blake to the side until she’s at his back in a position similar to Stiles. Stiles notes that she doesn’t let go of his shoulder either.

“Cora,” Derek rasps out.

She snarls at him, “They…you….everyone! All dead!”

“I know,” Derek says, and Stiles’ heart breaks a little at how even his tone is, how resigned. “But he’s right. This…right now…we have to.”

Isaac seems to take the words as a command. He traces his fingers over the lines of Boyd’s skull once more before he shifts to the side, laying his hand on Cora’s arm. Voice thick with tears, he says, “Come on.”

“He’s…”

But Isaac doesn’t let her get further. “He wouldn’t want this. You know that wasn’t his style.”

Cora just stares at him before shaking her head desperately. “It’s not fair,” she says, voice rising. “It’s not fair that he should survive so many months without the moon to die here. It’s not fair!”

“Life isn’t fair,” Ms. Blake says, and they all, save Derek, turn to her in surprise. “It's just fairer than death, that's all.”

And Stiles will be impressed by his teacher quoting “The Princess Bride” when Cora doesn’t look like she’ll rip her tongue out just for speaking, appropriate words or not. Before she can, Derek says, “Cora. Stop. Let him go.”

Isaac puts his hand over where she’s got hers fisted in Boyd’s shirt. Seconds after he does it, she collapses at his side, sobbing hushed but fangs and tears still present.

Stiles pretends not to notice Lydia’s hands shaking as she bends down and pours bleach into the gaping wounds on Boyd’s sides. He tries desperately not to notice the way the liquid washes away black and red, but he knows the colors will visit him in his dreams, vivid in all too real way.

“Okay,” she says, once she’s recapped the jug and set it at Boyd’s feet. “There’s a spot on the Preserve we can take him. I’ve seen patrol cars there before, so they should, um, they should find him quickly.”

“Right. Good. Great,” Stiles says, trying to think past the loud buzzing in his ears. “We should go then.”

“I’ll carry him,” Derek says, voice no louder than a whisper.

Stiles looks over Derek’s shoulders to see his bloodstained hands. They’re still trembling, but there’d been conviction in those three words and Stiles knows all about how doing one small thing can let you feel like you have control, a precious illusion that he has no desire to shatter for Derek or anyone else.

For the first time, Stiles shifts forward until he can look Derek in the eyes. Derek looks away from him after meeting his eyes for only a second, but Stiles has seen _that_ look in the mirror as well, the one he wore after he nearly went down in flames with Scott after stepping into a puddle of gasoline with the spark of the flare in Scott’s hand a promise he had hoped (prayed) Scott wouldn’t keep.

Stiles feels exhausted as he crouches down in front of Derek without letting him go, and he wonders if this is what his dad feels like every day — bearing up under this constant weight of other lives and guilt and so much pain. He wonders how much worse it is for Derek, who lost his home and so much of his family in that fire, who tries to do the right thing in all the wrong ways and just ends up getting his friends and his family hurt and killed while others use him to carry out their dirty work (Scott had used his fangs. The Alphas had used his claws. Stiles is pretty sure there’s a back story involving Kate Argent using Derek as well. Derek doesn’t deserve to have his body used like that. No one does).

He reaches out with his left hand and grasps Derek’s right, bringing it down into the water. The blood doesn’t rinse away easily, but it does come off a little, so Stiles repeats the action with Derek’s other hand.

Movement out of the corner of his eye lets him see that Ms. Blake’s lightly kneading Derek’s shoulder. He spares a moment to wonder how she got caught up in all of this, dragged into a world that seems to hold nothing but agony for those who enter it. He thinks of his conversation with Ms. Morrell about drowning, about hell and how you have to keep going. And his high school counselor is Deaton’s sister and that makes sense at the same time it really doesn’t and she’d said keep going. That’s more important than familial connections that he’ll have to investigate later.

Boyd is dead. That’s important right now, too. He’s gone and Erica’s gone and Stiles and Scott were almost gone and yeah, they have to keep going.

He takes Derek’s right wrist in his hand, leaving his thumb on Derek’s palm and his fingers on the outside so he can follow Derek’s lifeline with his thumb as he straightens out the clenched digits. Derek snarls at him then, fangs out but face untransformed, and Stiles knows that whatever had happened to Boyd (he should have been able to heal those wounds. Why hadn’t he healed? Why was he dead?), the Alphas had held Derek’s hands and made him do it.

“Sssh,” he coos, a mantra he can’t break without breaking himself. “Sssh. Just washing up. You’ve got him. You’ll carry him. Sssh.”

Derek actually looks at him then, not just with a passing glance, and the raw devastation and unshed tears in his eyes make Stiles choke.

“Stiles,” Derek says and Stiles can’t take that, he just can’t. He lets go of Derek’s hand and stands, but he can’t make himself let go of Derek’s shoulder.

Lydia and Isaac’s gazes are both waiting for him.

Isaac is holding onto Cora, and Stiles notices that they’re both still touching Boyd’s body, hands on his arm and chest respectively.

Lydia gives him a short nod and he swallows hard and nods in return before he turns back around to Derek and Ms. Blake.

He offers Derek his free hand. “Come on,” he says. “We have to keep going.”

“Derek,” Ms. Blake says, and Derek twists to look at her for a moment before looking back up at Stiles and taking his hand.

They’re in hell, and they have to keep going. Stiles wonders how long he’ll be able to keep going before the flames crash in around him and destroy everything. He’d felt their heat in the motel parking lot, and he’s not naïve enough to think he’ll make it out of this unscathed. And that more than anything, that sense of inevitability, scares the shit out of him.

Derek uses Stiles’ support and Ms. Blake’s help to get to his feet.

“Let’s…let’s go,” Derek says shakily. Stiles squeezes Derek’s shoulder one more time, hard, takes a deep breath and turns around, finally releasing his hold.

Stiles will keep going until those flames crash in. He doesn’t have any other choice because if he stops everyone else will, and he can’t let anyone else die.

“Yeah. Time to go.”


End file.
